Instagram is a dreadful site. There's no meaningful communication, it's totally shallow and superficial and full of attention-seeking weirdos and poseurs, and it has all the negative aspects of Facebook (as it is owned by Facebook), i.e. adverts for useless products that nobody actually needs, posts in a random order that makes no sense, and it only shows you a small proportion of what your friends post. It also demands to know your mobile phone number, which should be nobody's business, let alone Mark Zuckerberg's. I wouldn't touch it with a bargepole.
I joined because most musicians/bands I like are active on it and I can get feed from their pages. I don't like posting on it though. It's a very faulty, user unfriendly social media site that was developed primarily for smartphones and I primarily use desktop so lots of things don't work for me. Most of the photos I post there look horrible, it degrades their quality pretty badly so I end up deleting a lot of what I at first intended posting on there and just end up annoyed by it all.
@LadyGrace Yes, there's something like a safe bet that if you post a picture in 1:1 with 1080x1080 resolution, it should be okay but with all respect to them, I don't shoot my pictures in 1:1. 🤦🏻♀ I really don't like their rules. Another thing to know is that you hardly catch attention of random other people. It's not like on a small site like this where if you post pretty pictures, you get at least 5 likes. I am always very surprised when someone puts a like on my photos on Instagram because I have no idea how they came across my stuff at all. Probably somehow through the tags but I don't know. There are too many users and if you have no following, I guess you have zero chance to get to the feed.
@Mellowgirl I don't know. I tried many things but it's always obvious on my photos from the woods. It's not a huge difference so maybe if you look at photos of others you don't immediately see that something is wrong but when I know how sharp that photo is before uploading, I can see the difference very well. Also, if you look at Instagram on a small screen on a smartphone, it should be okay. I have a 4k screen though and some things come forward like crazy.
@DanielsASJ And for businesses that showcase their products. Which I'm often grateful for because now I can see what some restaurants offer and if I'm not satisfied, I can put my feedback right on their post. 😀
I think a lot of people like it and find it purposeful for a variety of reasons. I'm personally not a fan of social media except SW. I don't like to be influenced or promoted to as heavily as most social media these days does.
Like I don't mind the advertisements, I get it, but when the advertisers have an account and they're in my feed like it or not, I feel like I'm being controlled. I can't support that.
I joined because I wanted something new/different, especially from here. But I don't like the format at all. It's not condusive for interaction and discussion. Plus there are a ton of self centered self absorbed 'look at me' posts << that is their only purpose. Plus a ton of utter crap. But, there are also some beauty and poetry/words if you can find it. No, it's not like FB, to me. I'm rarely active there.
Sadly the old style forums are a thing of the past.. 😔
@Magenta Have you thought about LiveJournal? It's a lot quieter than it used to be, but it's still on the go and it still functions largely as it originally did and as a proper blogging/social media site should. All posts display in chronological order, it has simple privacy controls, no algorithms, doesn't show you stuff that's irrelevant or which you haven't asked to see, and it's designed for proper, meaningful communication. It's a mystery to me why people would rather be on garbage sites like FB and Instagram.
@LadyGrace There is so much art on it! It's often about what you watch the most so the algorithm will start to show more of it to you. I have a lot of watercolor paintings in my feed and it's also popular to show the process of how they paint. Just now it showed me this:
@SeekingConnection Hmm I have not. Sounds interesting though, I may check into that. Thank you for the suggestion. I do still frequent tumblr, one of the oldest sites around, because I can find some beautiful and meaningful content there.
I was going to use it to start my business but I'm honest I got a little stage freight and competition nerves. So I post infrequently. My dog on the other has been more successful and made lots of online friends. It's more of a way for me to store his images and videos. And connect with other boston terrier owners in the uk. Since they aren't as popular as French bull dogs...
Its garbage. The reason why I had it was a lot of the trainers I followed on Facebook went over too Instagram. Most of the stuff on it are targeted ads for stuff from sites that are probably not legitimate. I have found that you see more ads than anything else.
@Adrift As I recall, Instagram wasn't awash with adverts until it was bought by Facebook. I thought it was a pretty garbage site before that, but it became unusable to me after that happened. I don't want to see any adverts at all, ever. Or indeed, any content that I haven't specifically asked to see.
@SeekingConnection I have found that even YouTube is turning from a decent tool for learning into a garbage site full of AI and restricted content. A lot of the content providers are going to private resources like patreon.
@Adrift Yes, I agree. Aside from the now unblockable adverts, a thing that has been particularly annoying me about that site is that it keeps pushing nasty, offensive videos about things such as executions or torture on the home page, and there appears to be no way to delete or block them. Maybe that stuff appeals to some very creepy weirdos, but I find it utterly revolting. Why it should think I would want to watch that stuff, I haven't a clue. There's a lot of corporate and extreme political propaganda too, often promoting views that have no basis in fact. At the same time, censorship on YouTube is absurd. Why does it promote content and then not allow you to watch it?
It annoys me. It’s so disorganized. 😫 But family likes to keep everyone updated on it, so I keep one. It has become more ads than the ability to see what they post, I should add.
It's a social media site/app owned by Meta (Facebook company) which focuses more on pictures and image feeds. Although you can still chat/DM and post and all that other stuff. While Facebook is more oriented around sharing things with people in your friends group, Instagram is more about subscribing to different public image feeds.
